Couple finally home after coronavirus fears strand them on cruise ship
Being rejected by five countries over fears fellow cruise ship passengers were infected with the novel coronavirus hasn’t soured Ken and Marlene Morrison from high seas holidays.
The couple were returning to Calgary on Saturday after finally departing Holland America Line’s Westerdam cruise ship in Cambodia, but not before ports in Thailand, Japan, Taiwan, Guam and the Philippines rejected it.
The couple embarked on a gruelling five-stop flight home on Friday and Saturday — with none of those same rejections on the horizon.
“We have been tested a number of times for symptoms of the virus and we have all been cleared every time,” the two said in an email.
“This experience with Holland America has only increased our loyalty to them as a cruise line,” Ken, 74, and Marlene, 73, said in an email.
They admitted there was tension aboard the ship and among its more than 2,000 passengers and crew after an 83-year-old American woman showed symptoms of the virus when the ship departed Hong Kong on Feb. 1, to begin a two-week voyage bound for Japan.
When it finally docked at Sihanoukville, Cambodia, “a hazmat health group came on board to test everyone by swab throats and nose and temperature test. The labs cleared everyone after tests were taken by helicopter to Phnom Penh,” said the Morrisons.
“And when we arrived at our hotel in Phnom Penh, we were temperature checked again as we got off the buses.”
The potentially infected woman repeatedly tested negative at a hospital in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, vindicating Cambodian officials who had been criticized for allowing passengers off the Westerdam.
For the Morrisons, that meant frustration over a hysteria they attributed to the genuinely dire situation plaguing passengers and crew of the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which held hundreds of infected passengers as it was quarantined at Yokohama, Japan.
“The World Health virus scare multiplied by the Diamond Princess ship infections has exacerbated our situation,” they said.
While they remained on the Westerdam, the ship’s operators maintained a sense of normalcy hardly consistent with a vessel spurned by so many countries, said the couple.
“The conditions were fine on the ship and although we were to leave on Saturday, the events aboard kept on as if we were on a regular cruise,” they said.
Other Canadians weren’t so lucky, including 129 Canadians who are trading quarantine aboard the Diamond Princess for two weeks of isolation at the Nav Centre in Cornwall, Ont.
Dozens of other Canadians who have returned from infected parts of the world, primarily China, have undergone similar quarantines at CFB Trenton, Ont.